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President Obama Takes Action on Vets’ Mental Health

By Lawrence Downes August 31, 2012 6:59 pmAugust 31, 2012 6:59 pm

Today President Obama signed an executive order to improve mental-health care for service members and veterans, who are killing themselves at alarming and baffling rates. The order affects the Departments of Veterans Affairs, Defense, Health and Human Services, Education and Homeland Security. It calls for things like more hiring of mental-health professionals, a national suicide-prevention campaign, and a review of existing mental-health and addiction-treatment programs to identify and expand the programs that work well.

Since 9/11, more than 2 million men and women have served in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a rising number of them are taking their own lives. Last month the Defense Department reported that the Army had 26 suspected suicides among active-duty soldiers in July alone, the worst month in at least three years. It said there were 116 potential active-duty suicides in the Army so far this year, compared with 165 in all of 2011. The other forces were also affected. According to The Army Times, so far this year, there have been 32 suicides in the Marine Corps, 55 in the Air Force and 39 in the Navy.

And then there are the veterans. The V.A. estimates that they are committing suicide at the rate of 18 per day.

Mr. Obama’s order follows in the wake of bitter court battles over the delivery of care and persistent reports of egregious delays in the delivery of mental-health services and the handling of disability claims. The invisible wounds of war are notoriously difficult to diagnose and treat — as The Times’s James Dao has reported, even the experts aren’t sure whether P.T.S.D. is underdiagnosed among veterans, as many advocates and mental-health professionals insist, or is diagnosed too frequently, as some other experts say (quietly).

But there is little doubt about the need to do something to halt the frightening suicide trend.

Mr. Obama’s order would expand by 50 percent the capacity of the V.A.’s crisis line, to make sure that any veteran in crisis gets professional help within 24 hours. It’s encouraging to see that he wants to add 800 peer-to-peer counselors and improve the V.A.’s partnerships with community-based organizations —one barrier to care has been veterans’ apprehensions about going near (and getting lost in) the V.A. bureaucracy. Many of them could be helped by the encouragement and understanding of their fellow veterans, and by the effective outreach of a small provider in their own home town.

The inadequacy of help for suffering troops and veterans is one of the few things that Democrats and Republicans seem to agree on. Mitt Romney said nothing to or about the troops at the Republican Convention last night. But, in a speech on Wednesday, he said: “Veterans face unconscionable waits for mental health treatment. The problems with the VA are serious, and must be fixed. We are in danger of another generation of veterans losing their faith in VA system.”